Electronic Arts has signed a deal with Valve to distribute the upcoming Portal 2 through its EA Partners publishing arm.

Coming out in April barring a Valve Time interruption, Portal 2 will feature all-new puzzles, Aperture Science test chambers and of course a reunion with the smooth-talking GlaDOS, the sexiest thing to come out of an artificial intelligence lab since Shodan. EA announced today that it has signed a deal with Valve to distribute the game at retail through its EA Partners publishing arm; digital distribution of the game will be handled by Valve through its Steam platform.

"Portal 2 is Valve's most innovative title in the company's history and will be launched with a first-class launch campaign this April," said Doug Lombardi, Valve's vice president of marketing. "We're excited to be working with Electronic Arts to deliver this title as we expand our platform strategy to include the Mac and PlayStation 3 platforms."

The EA Partners program has resulted in publishing and distribution deals between Electronic Arts and a number of high-profile developers along with Valve, including Crytek's Crysis series, the Rock Band games from Harmonix and Epic's upcoming Bulletstorm. Portal 2 will actually be the fourth Valve game distributed at retail by EA Partners, following The Orange Box and the two Left 4 Dead games.

Portal 2 is scheduled for release on April 21 for the PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Mac.

that's awesome! but i have to laugh at "Portal 2 is Valve's most innovative title in the company's history...". really? Portal 2 is more innovative than Portal? does he know what innovative actually means? or is the sequel taking huge leaps from the original?

*edit* really? no one else finds it amusing that he's calling a sequel the most innovative thing his company has ever done? to me it just sounds like the sort of incredibly stupid thing that only a marketing guy could come up with...

KEM10:Maybe EA will keep the Valve time closer to real time if they are sinking money into it too.

I don't think EA have any foothold in it, to be honest. They're taking a cut of the money for distributing the retail copies, that's how it works. I don't think their name even goes on the box. Valve don't have the resources to distribute their games outside of Steam, with Half-Life 1 being Sierra, for example, so they need to make deals like this to get their games into stores.

considering that valve games tend to get pamphlets instead of instruction manuals and I intend to get the game on pc, Ill probably just do digital distribution for the damn thing, valve is the only company I would think about giving full price for a game digitally only

Because EA make their own logo very conspicuous on the adverts they produce for Valve games as if they actually made the game and Valve's own logo gets demoted to something alongside Bink video, Steam, Havok and other third-party applications. Gabe Newell really should have taken them to task over the Left4Dead advert which screamed "WE ARE EA! WE MADE THIS! These other little people helped.." .

It's cool that it will be distributed more widely. The other uptake is the reversal of the port. Normally, PC get console ports, but now the console will be the port. It's a small comfort really. Go Valve, milk EA for all they are worth, if their higher ups still keep talking the way they do, they will end up in the dust of everyone else. One day maybe you'll buy them, haha.

KEM10:Maybe EA will keep the Valve time closer to real time if they are sinking money into it too.

I don't think EA have any foothold in it, to be honest. They're taking a cut of the money for distributing the retail copies, that's how it works. I don't think their name even goes on the box. Valve don't have the resources to distribute their games outside of Steam, with Half-Life 1 being Sierra, for example, so they need to make deals like this to get their games into stores.

I know, same thing happens with movies. However some of the pushers end up sternly looking at the developers if they take too long.

Cool maybe the Ps3 version will be good, and I'm only getting the Ps3 version because I just know that Portal 2 will lag my laptop horribly due to it's sheer amount of awesomeness and I don't want to be the person who makes it a chore to play multiplayer with...

Thorvan:Okay, I know it's a bit off topic, but does anyone else think it REALLY disturbing to think of GLaDOS as sexy? Slick, brilliant, maybe even attractive, but sexy? Just, uhrm, no.

EDI, however. I could go for that.

Well, I'm sure there's some people who get turned on by humorously psychotic computers with loose grasps on how human psychology works, but that doesn't seem like a very profitable demographic.

I suppose if you were a Submissive, you could find her "testing initiative" quite... ahem. Not to make any judgement of poor Andy, of course.

I hope you guys are joking here. If not, have you never heard of a particularly cool, well designed from an aesthetic standpoint piece of electronics being described as "Sexy?" As in, "The PS3 is one sexy machine?" Because it's a pretty common phrase, which doesn't really have anything to do with sexual attraction.

OT: Nice to see that they have a publishing deal locked in, but it's no big surprise that EA is doing it once again. It's not like Sierra is still around, at least not as the major publisher it was back when Half Life was released. Man do I miss Sierra...

Well, I'm sure there's some people who get turned on by humorously psychotic computers with loose grasps on how human psychology works, but that doesn't seem like a very profitable demographic.

I suppose if you were a Submissive, you could find her "testing initiative" quite... ahem. Not to make any judgement of poor Andy, of course.

I hope you guys are joking here. If not, have you never heard of a particularly cool, well designed from an aesthetic standpoint piece of electronics being described as "Sexy?" As in, "The PS3 is one sexy machine?" Because it's a pretty common phrase, which doesn't really have anything to do with sexual attraction.

OT: Nice to see that they have a publishing deal locked in, but it's no big surprise that EA is doing it once again. It's not like Sierra is still around, at least not as the major publisher it was back when Half Life was released. Man do I miss Sierra...

Are you saying that GLaDOS is not a person, Owyn? Are you really going to degrade her to such depths? Look at all she's done for you! Introduced you to the companion cube, whom you- err, nevermind. Offered you delicious cake, which she never actually- okay, nothing there either....Gave you an awesome gun that can bend space? I guess? That works. That's important! How dare you insult her considering that thing she did for you! Jerk!

Was Gabe Newell asleep at this meeting or has the team at Valve been so engrossed in fine-tuning Half Life Episode 3 that they've completely forgotten who EA is? This is going to end with a breach of contract lawsuit as EA tries to claim full ownership of Portal, Portal 2, and the Source engine for some bullshit reason.